The streets of Glassview pulsed with light, laughter, and the clatter of celebration. Stalls were draped in banners of azure and silver, crowds pressing shoulder to shoulder, the air thick with roasted meats, sweet incense, and the acrid tang of fireworks sparks. Lanterns bobbed above the thoroughfares like floating stars, casting shifting glows across cobblestones scarred from months of reconstruction.Caster Spellbound moved through it all almost invisibly, a shadow among the living. He walked with the grace of a man used to command, though his eyes constantly flicked upward, scanning, measuring, reading the currents of mana that hummed invisibly above the city. The festival was meant to honor heroes, him, Sikoa, Solon, the brave few who had risked everything, but in the back of his mind, a dozen other faces haunted him. The students, archivists, and low-tier assistants who had perished in the inferno of the burning library. The necrotic storms. The invisible toll exacted by th

The archive doors seal behind him with a muted thud. Caster does not turn.The sound tells him enough. The locking sigils are old. Spectral Lime originals. No Consortium overrides. No silent alarms. Just layered wards and heavy stone.The lamps inside the restricted wing burn low. Their light is pale and uneven, trapped inside glass cylinders etched with age-worn runes. Shadows stretch across shelves that rise to the ceiling, packed tight with sealed volumes, crystal slates, and memory coils. Dust hangs in the air. Caster steps forward. Each footfall echoes once, then dies. The floor is slate, cracked in places, repaired in others. Old chalk lines still cling to the seams, half scrubbed, half forgotten.He lifts a hand. Mana flows out in thin filaments, brushing the air, tasting it. The wards recognize him. Not his face. Not his name. His pattern.The shelves nearest him hum softly, then fall silent again. He moves deeper.This wing predates Glassview’s expansion. Before Twin Moons.